Below is an interesting-looking battery company and some grand claims. As with all such news, I wait to see a commercial product before getting too excited, but if the technology is as good as the PR writer is confident about the tech, this could be one of the battery technologies that make it out of the dugout and onto the field. I reached out to EDEN BDN one week ago for more information on its product, but am yet to hear back. Specifically, I wrote:
The claims look pretty grand and exciting, but I’ve got a few more questions. Could you provide me with some more info on:
- Number of test cycles to date.
- Efficiency.
- Projected cost per kWh.
Also, there was a sort of odd line in there — “recharged from the recovered energy of the moving car – potential to reach unlimited mileage” — which comes across as a perpetual motion claim, but I think it was probably just a veiled reference to a unique way in which the battery can be charged. Could you provide more info on that?
Without that information, here’s the full news release published last month:
More efficient solar cells and electric car batteries are on the horizon, thanks to the work of Scientists from EDEN BDM Limited, in residence at the Melbourne Centre for Nanofabrication (MCN). EDEN BDM have developed a new battery architecture that aims to solve the problem of efficiently storing surplus power from solar cells, while it would also allow the development of cheaper electric powered vehicles (EPV) with an extended driving range.
The EDEN nanoflow battery is believed to be the world’s first microfluidics battery using a miniaturised electrolyte flow battery design. In a flow battery, the electrolytes are charged and discharged in a cycle that is repeated thousands of times, meaning that they can be discharged down to zero charge at every cycle without suffering damage.
Other major advantages of the EDEN nanoflow battery are that they do not heat up and do not contain environmentally unsound materials, making them one of the safest battery designs for EPVs. Furthermore, they are able to be recharged from the recovered energy of the moving car, meaning that future cars will not need to stop to be externally recharged, giving them the potential to reach unlimited mileage.
The method used to collect and store this energy comes from a vitreous catalyst constructed from nanoparticles. Approximately 170 microfluidic chips containing this catalyst are combined to create a larger battery, weighing just 2 kilograms. Six of these batteries provides enough energy to power a small EPV and the combined weight is just 1.2% of a conventional EPV battery.
MCN is Australia’s largest research cleanroom and leaders in nanofabrication innovation.
